WARNING: DO NOT ATTEMPT ANY OF THE INSTRUCTIONS FOLLOWED IN THIS STORY, IF YOU DO, FOLLOW MORE SPECIFIC INSTRUCTIONS TO BE SAFE, AND REMEMBER, IT IS AT YOUR OWN RISK.
I have a thrill that is no secret when I know I’m playing with fire. I guess that’s why I did it. The elevator game. I know, it sounds like a game kids play in the elevator by pushing all the b*****s at once and seeing which floor you go to. But no, it’s not. It’s the kind of game where if you push b*****s in a certain sequence, you can go to another dimension. Sounds fun, right? Well, listen to my story:
The night before I looked up the instructions, and cut and pasted them to my notes. When I woke I decided to head to a hospital near my house, my step mom was there, in a coma, so I would visit her there too. I left my house at 6:30 pm and got to the hospital at 6:47 pm. I visited my step mother and then took out my phone, pulling up the rules. I left my step mother at 8:58 pm and then found an empty elevator, I look at my phone and look at rule number one:
Enter the elevator alone on floor one.
Press four. (Stay in the elevator until the rules say to get out)
Press two.
Press six.
Press two.
I stop at rule number two. I hear singing. My name. Jara… Jara… men and women sing it. Is this supposed to happen? Do I get off? I look back at my phone. In the “Extra Guidance’ section of the text it says “In the middle of the ritual you may hear voices, DO NOT answer them” I start to feel uneasy, the door opens and I quickly press the next button in the sequence: ten.
I look at the next number: five. I check the “Extra Guidance” section and it says ” A woman may enter the elevator, Do NOT do the following when she enters the elevator: LOOK AT, TOUCH, TALK TO, OR EVEN GLANCE AT THIS WOMEN, SHE IS NOT WHAT SHE SEEMS TO BE. ” I press five. I get closest to the b*****s as I can and close my eyes, placing my finger on the next button, ready to press: number ten. The door opens and footsteps echo from the hallway to the elevator. Fear wells and boils in my stomach, heat rises from it and heats my entire body, and melts my brain into nothing but thick, heavy nausea. I feel her breathing on the side of my neck. I shut my eyes tighter.
“Hello.” She says.
I say nothing. I dig my finger into the button. The elevator continues in ascension as the woman incessantly badgers me, spilling empty words into my ears. The door reaches the tenth floor and I run out the door as the woman shrieks and shouts, “Come back!”.
I run around the corner, where the elevator is out of site. I wait to calm down, disoriented. I look in front of me and see room 897. Empty. Completely. I walk further down the hall and find that all of the rooms are empty. I look back at the nurse’s station. That’s empty too. No. No… this is my step mom’s floor, on the west side of it. To the left of the nurse’s station. I walk down to room number 861, scurrying past the elevator like a kid to their bed after turning the lights off. I step in front of the curtain and hesitate before I push it to the side. My step mom… she’s awake… looking at me. My eyes widen in horror. It worked. I start to cry. I don’t feel the teardrops running down my face, but I know their there. I start to become more self aware of my surroundings, more so my senses. This is wrong. Everything feels wrong. The air that I breathe is lukewarm and liquid, like I’m underwater. I open my mouth to speak, but I can’t push the air out. Everything looks different, but the same. This is not the same hospital, the walls were blue before, but now they are grey. The ground that I stand on is not solid. It’s like air. When I become aware of it I suddenly feel like I am constantly falling, but I’m not. Like being in an elevator and going down, but without the floor. I raise my leg in the liquid air, it feels absolutely weightless. I gather all the strength I have and attempt to stomp on the ground. I fail. My leg raises completely up in the water, I fall of balance and trip to the floor, I feel like I’m drowning. I flail on the anti ground and try to get up, it feels like I’m free falling and choking at the same time. My brain might actually blow up. I need solid ground to get up. I grab the curtain and pull myself up. I look at my mom. She’s smiling. This… is not my step mother. She’d be yelling for nurses or maybe even rip the IV off of her and help me herself. Even when I tripped, before she was in her car crash, she would be right there beside me. I stand back up, keeping tethered to the curtain. I want to say “Who are you?”, but I can’t. The water, I’d be lucky if even a bubble appeared.
My head spins, pounding against my skull. I slowly back out of the room. Her smile widens every step I take. I watch in terrifying amazement as I remember how my mother’s smile was the exact same. Down to the observation of how it spread as quick as softened butter on hot toast.
I continue out of the room as I stare at her with an uneasy grimace on my face. I am the most confused that I have ever been in my entire life. I have to leave. I pull out my phone. It’s not working. The screen is just a mix of colors and pixels. How do I get back?
I try to remember what it said. First floor? I guess… I get into the elevator. The woman is still there. But she isn’t badgering me. I caught only a glimpse of her feet, as I was looking down when I entered the elevator. I press the button for the first floor. It is only when I start to leave that the woman shrieks again. I am relieved to see a man walk past me, he says “Hello.” and smiles. But I don’t return the smile, or the greeting, I just keep walking, with a stone, paranoid expression on my face, eyes shifting to every little detail around me.
I look at my phone again. Broken. I put it in my pocket and walk out of the hospital. I look up to see a giant circle of some sort of technology circling in the sky… the green sky. I look down and see slim, nine foot pale white figures, hundreds of them, carrying people by their feet and walking into the sky and entering the circle …
Wrong dimension.